Filmmaker/Photographer
Plays fiddle and taught Video Production at
the University of Ottawa
Her documentary films include“Baseball Girls”
(women who play softball and baseball)
“Lip
Gloss” (female impersonators)
“Strangers in Town” (albinism)
and “Stunt
People”
(The Fournier Family performing stunts for films)

Lois Siegel worked with
Public Pictures, Toronto, as Special Consultant
on the documentary
production "Remembering Arthur"
about filmmaker Arthur Lipsett

To most people Arthur Lipsett will always be an enigma. He was unique.
His idiosyncrasies bred myths, and, these myths were so strong that they
pass on, like fairy-tales. During the last week of April 1986, Arthur
Lipsett ended his life, two weeks before his birthday. He would have been 50
on May 13.

A Glimpse of Lipsett

He loved simple things: chocolate-covered M & M peanuts, National
Lampoon's film "Vacation", and his own, original spaghetti sauce which
he garnished with pickles and olives.

He discovered the power of film at a young age and set about creating
high-voltage collages. A sculptor, his materials were down-to-earth,
everyday people. His messages were challenges to our beliefs, practices and
values.

He saw a discrepancy between what we say and what we do: that somehow the
connection was missing. He also questioned why people do what they do; for
example, in "21-87" a man on a horse is shot out of a cannon, and in "A Trip Down Memory Lane," a young girl rides atop a balloon high in the
sky, while a waiter serves a meal among the open girders of a skyscraper
under construction. People are curious beings.

So Lipsett collected images portraying the bizarre relationship between
the human organism and the environment. His explorations baffled some,
stunned others. But one thing was sure. He had something important to say to
us all - if we would only listen.

Lipsett was a filmmaker, philosopher and eccentric. He grew up on
Hingston Street in the west of Montreal. At 21, fresh from the Museum of
Fine Arts School, he was "adopted " after a fashion by The National Film
Board, where most of his creative years were spent. Early in Lipsett's film
career, his life seemed exuberant. Producer Colin Low, who first hired
Lipsett, describes him as a "lively, wide-eyed, bushy-tailed kid. He had a
knack for randomly gleaning what interested
him."

Photo by Judith Sandiford, 1963

He discovered film by working on short clips in the Animation Department.
He made bloopy cartoon films for sponsors in Ottawa, spots for TV,
illustrations to be used as inserts for live-action films -- what was known
as "service work."

Lipsett began collecting bits and pieces of "outs" or film discarded by
other filmmakers, unearthing these scraps in editing bins and garbage cans.
Working late at night, he meshed these odd shapes and sounds together to
create his greatest film, "Very Nice, Very Nice." The film was composed
almost entirely of stills and cost about $500.00. The technique was
different because Lipsett was putting pictures to sound. The soundtrack came
first: an assembly of disparate voices spliced together. Other people worked
the other way around, tacking sound onto images; only animators started with
the sound-track.

"Very Nice, Very Nice" was nominated for an Academy Award in 1961.
Lipsett was 25 years-old.

"Very Nice, Very Nice" has a sober, somber quality to it. It speaks
of the indifference of humankind. At one point a man's voice states: "People
who have made no attempt to educate themselves live in a kind of dissolving
phantasmagoria of the world, that is, they completely forget what happened
last Tuesday (a series of various close-up faces dissolve one into the
other). A politician can promise them anything, and they will not remember
later what he has promised."

Very Nice, Very Nice

The film is filled with contradictions: (stuttering voice) "...and the
game is really nice to look at." (we see a collage of wrestling photos
picturing grimacing faces and hefty men tugging and pulling at each other in
agony). A bomb explodes: "Everyone wonders what the future will behold."

This is intercut with people having fun and smiling: smiling mouths, smiling
eyes... then another shot of the bomb... (man's voice) : "This is my line,
and I love it." Later we see shots of newspapers: "There's sort of a passing
interest in things." (followed by a shot of a pastry-shop window and a cake
in the shape of a smiling cat), "But there's no real concern." "People seem
unwilling to become involved in anything..." (more collage photos of faces:
a Santa Claus, pause, a shot of a dead man on the street) "I mean really
involved."

"Almost everybody has a washing machine, a drying machine." "I would say
that's really a dangerous thing, if the only thing you can think of to
express your individuality is an orange plantation in Brazil...."

Lipsett questioned middle-class values. He felt victimized by them. He
puzzled over people's obsessions with objects. His films view life as a
living hell.

U.S. Air Force planes pile up in a waste heap...

we hear a bongo roll,
"And they say the situation is getting worse," followed by laughter. More
planes appear. Finally, we hear applause, then "Bravo, Very Nice, Very
Nice."

"Whether he was ahead, behind or out of his time is irrelevant. He was
just a very good artist," says filmmaker Derek May.

Photo by Judith Sandiford, 1963

At the Board, Lipsett completed five more films, each on the theme,
variation or development of his fascination with the connection between
sounds and images and the people who create them. His producers included Tom
Daly, Colin Low, Don Brittain and Guy Glover, who served as his defenders,
since Lipsett was never very good at supporting himself.

Tom Daly explains: "In the early 60s experimental film was an essential
part of the National Film Board. As a producer I was more an editor of ideas
rather than an inventor. I had a flair for recognizing creativity in others.
My relationship with Arthur was an arms-length relationship. He had a
special bent for unused soundtracks of the world. He especially savored
funny and odd events. For example, a narrator (Stanley Jackson) making
mistakes and laughing while being recorded. Initially Arthur's films weren't
a problem because his films weren't expensive."

Lipsett was aware of the experimental films being made in the 1950s. "Guy
Viau, whose films became the start of the Cinematheque, had a fantastic
personal collection. We used to go over and see films by Maya Deren, Bruce
Connor, Kenneth Anger." recalls Judith Sandiford, Arthur's girlfriend for 11
years. Arthur especially liked Anger's "Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome."

Many have called Lipsett a genius, but genius too is human. As he moved
more and more into his films, the messages seemed to become more obscure to
the outside world. Distributors labeled his films "difficult." Management at
the Board decided Lipsett could continue to make films only if under firm
control, but Lipsett was not under the control of anyone. A producer could
only act as a protector.

"Even "Very Nice Very Nice" was not well-accepted'" explains Gordon
Martin who was in charge of the Board's Screen Study program in film
education. "Educators were asking 'what is it about?' We tried to get them
to react to it as an experience, that is, how did it feel? People only
changed their attitudes when it was nominated for an Academy Award."

"Generally, people in NFB Distribution thought the film was rubbish,"
recalls Mark Slade, who had just come to NFB distribution at that time and
is now retired. "I viewed the film as the light on the horizon. I was very
excited by it.

"The government doesn't sponsor people
to do creative work," Slade continues. "They want to keep the lid on to
confirm the agency's mandate. Arthur wanted questioning. No government in
the world will permit that. No one would have given William Blake a Canada Council Grant."

Lipsett's success with "Very Nice, Very Nice" gave him 'carte
blanche' for a while, but as his films became less accessible, NFB
management became wary. Lipsett's career began to flounder.

"I checked Arthur's films between 1967 and 1968, and 1000 prints were in
distribution," says Slade. "Fluxes" was held by distribution for over
a year before it was allowed out in public. I saw a memo from Jeannine
Hopfinger to Will Jobbins, Director of Distribution, which said the only
prints out were the ones I had given out to people. None of it was true.
This is the strategy they used."

"By 1970, "Very Nice" had sold well over 200 prints, which was a good
seller in those days. The film was supported internally by Tom Daly, who was
a real strength to Arthur," Gordon Martin adds, "But some people at the
Board couldn't understand what Lipsett was doing, and they felt
threatened." Eventually Tom Daly too came under bureaucratic pressure.

"If you look back now historically he was really anticipating the world
of moving images we know today, where we can flip back and forth on the TV
between 30 channels," Martin explains. "Arthur was using film in basic
linear form and was still creating multiple imagery. His images and sounds
would create after- images which would carry over as bridges to other
sequences."

"Arthur was not appreciated by the people who had the power to give
opportunities to make another film," Mark Slade adds. "They would no longer
give him a budget unless he would make his films differently. But Lipsett
was a film poet. Rather than make mediocre films, he accepted a job editing
travel films.

"I remember one of his jobs required that he edit the flies and bugs out
of a film for Northern Affairs," Slade continues. "They didn't want bugs to
appear in the film, They knew people weren't attracted to black flies. For
months Arthur literally had to edit out the flies that appeared in the
image.

"There seemed to be only room for one person like Norman McLaren at the
Board. If you don't get cultural affirmation of your work for a long time,
eventually you lose confidence in yourself."

The actual making of films gradually became less possible for Lipsett at
the Film Board. He withdrew into his own private life where he seemed to be
walking around in his films.

He often appeared with his Leica on Montreal streets. By this point,
no-one was sure whether he even had film in his camera. Arthur Lipsett had
begun to die. And no one seemed strong enough to turn him around.

"Unlike Norman McLaren, who researched before making a film with formal,
structural, organic laws, Arthur experimented in the making of his films,"
says Daly. "His later films seemed less effectively formed and seemed to
wander more. After a while, his films seemed to be covering much the same
ground over and over again."

"Eventually, a gap ensued between his personal vision and where he met
the audience. This was precarious territory," explains Derek May. When he
had outgrown his stay at the Film Board, Arthur left for a three-month
"sabbatical" to England, accompanied by Judith Sandiford.

"He was very angry at the Film Board by 1970," she explains. "At first
our trip was fine, then Arthur began to have anxiety attacks. It was the
time of the October crisis in Montreal, so we went to Toronto instead of
returning to Montreal."

Lipsett had his severance pay from the NFB, so he was financially all right
for a while. The Canada Council asked him to be on a jury. It was the only
spin-off from his film career he ever agreed to. He wanted to make collages
and stay away from film for a while.

In the fall 1972, he applied for a Canada Council grant from the Visual
Arts Section to do collages and murals. Ironically, after having been a jury
member, he didn't get the grant. He had no previous record as a 'visual
artist,' and it was difficult to switch disciplines. Then he made a film
called "Strange Codes," which was shot by his friend Henry Zemel. "I
tried to get the NFB to distribute it," says Mark Slade, "which didn't
happen. There are film scholars who would like to see an artist's work in
block, and this film would interest them."

Lipsett's world shifted.

"He insisted that everything had a sound or a force field," explains
Sandiford. "He had that kind of intensified perception of things. I didn't
know anyone who paid that much attention to the world. It was this intense
capacity for observation that later became unbearable for Arthur. He bought
industrial ear-protectors because he couldn't bear hearing things. He was
just too sensitive. At first he got them because of noisy neighbors, then he
began to wear them all the time. Inanimate objects had symbolic importance
for him. His films made you see things you didn't see otherwise."

"When I first met Arthur in 1962 I was between my third and fourth years
at McGill University studying psychology. Arthur's version of the world was
a lot more exciting than school."

"He was just moving to Coronet Street near St. Joseph's Oratory. I helped
him unpack. I found it rather unusual that he had packed his unwashed dishes
when he moved."

"When I met him he dressed beautifully. He bought everything in New
York...boots, hand-woven ties. Gradually clothes became ingredients in the
world of rules. He couldn't wear certain things and had to wear others. He
started dressing more eccentrically; for example, he'd wear three or four
flannel shirts on top of each other."

"By the spring of 1973, Arthur began having hallucinations. He wouldn't
sleep much. He was getting very restless and smoking a lot of dope. Arthur's
first reaction to drugs years before had been that he didn't need them --
his mind was already far out enough. Now he started hanging around other
people who smoked."

"He complained that the ceiling was the wrong color, so we painted it.
One day he began sawing a beautiful oak chair and packing it away. These
weren't things I could take care of anymore. I made an appointment with a
psychiatrist for advice. 'I think you're on their side,' Arthur accused. I
had to leave. I couldn't handle the situation anymore."

Lipsett's friends were concerned when his life began to disintegrate.
Toronto filmmaker Martin Lavut remembers coming home and discovering him
sitting on the floor surrounded by all the electrical appliances in the
house, plugged in. "The TV was turned to static, and Arthur was encircled by
the toaster, the blender, and the electric shaver, and he was talking to
them. This was his first breakdown: in Toronto in 1973. I took him to the
Clarke, a psychiatric institution. He didn't object. He knew something was
wrong. He had begun to hear voices. The doctors gave him pills to calm his
nerves. Arthur had a very low tolerance to drugs. He couldn't even take
aspirin. If he smoked a joint, he'd be high for two days. Drugs flipped him
out. They served as the trigger."

In 1975, Lipsett went to Vancouver where he filmed
"Blue and Orange"
with Tanya Tree. The film remains incomplete.

He returned to Toronto and then, in 1977, frustrated by some incident, he
took a taxi from Toronto to Montreal which cost him $250 to $300, according
to Zemel.

How to deal with raising money to make films had become a real barrier.
At the NFB, he had been somewhat protected. Now the outside world was less
sensitive to his needs. Lipsett began to close down.

An Intimate Stranger

The problem with compiling a story about Arthur Lipsett is that one has
to invent the subject as a coherent whole to bring together in one place a
variety of reflections. When the subject is Arthur Lipsett, this is not a
simple matter.

Lipsett's life was a puzzle, very much like his films. He dealt with
people in the same way as he made films -- he juxtaposed them. Each person
in his life seemed to know him at a different period: pre-Film Board, Film
Board, post-Film Board. Sometimes his best friends didn't even know each
other.

To the people who knew him, even minimally, Arthur Lipsett was someone
they would never forget. There was something so strong about encounters with
him, even brief ones. He always left a bit of his personality behind.

Although it is readily recognized that Lipsett had something special
about him, the broader question remains: how to encourage talent and
imagination without destroying the individual and this in North America
where there's such an insistence that the artist produce something?

Lipsett was like a shaman or a philosopher. Perhaps in a different
culture, he would have been more readily accepted, although his filmmaking
did strongly influence other people's film styles. To some he was like an
icon -- one of a kind.

"...There is a generation of young people whose own survival is linked
with the survival of Arthur Lipsett," Mark Slade wrote in 1968 in an article
entitled, "Arthur Lipsett: the Hyper Anxious William Blake of Modern
Cinema."

"The tragedy is that Arthur Lipsett couldn't find the environment that
could appreciate him," explains filmmaker Tanya Tree. "He couldn't cope with
bureaucracy."

"One never knows how to deal with other people's pain except perhaps to
be too brisk or rough," Colin Low adds. "I was dismayed by the darkness of
his films. We once had an argument at the Moviola. 'The world can't be that
miserable,' I pleaded. His films were fascinating to look at but needed
structure."

"He showed me the rushes of a later film, and I thought it was incredibly
self-indulgent, and I told him that. There were scenes of people high, on
pot or something, staggering around an apartment -- I just didn't
understand. I got very upset, and I said, "Arthur, the Film Board ought to
fire you because that's dumb stuff." I think it wounded him badly, and there
were people in distribution and directors of production sitting there, and
no one was saying anything. That was his status at the time.

"I believe he was lionized too early. Arthur couldn't handle his
instant-celebrity status. He had fallen into a stupid syndrome where you
think you have to make a film that gets even more attention. His work should
have matured more slowly. As time went on, he became more frantic."

Reminiscences from a Visual Sea

Arthur Lipsett's personality was consistently unpredictable, and this
capacity to look at the world in a different way always intrigued those who
knew him.

He has been described as a strange creature who loped down the corridors
of the NFB with the right shoulder hugging the wall as he moved, following
the indentations of doorways or other variations in otherwise straight
surfaces. His head was always turned to the side, averting his gaze from the
world.

"He talked with humor. Everything had another meaning for him. He took
little at face value," says Derek May.

Lipsett worked at night -- removed from everyday activities. Because
other filmmakers would often borrow his equipment during the day, and he had
trouble keeping track of it, he obtained a 30-foot chain to which he secured
everything in sight. Like a snake, he would wind it through his moviola to
the splicer, through a pair of scissors, around the room, anchoring
everything in sight. Then the serpent was clamped tight by a huge padlock.
"It looked like a medieval torture chamber," says Don Brittain.

It is rumored that when Lipsett left the NFB, he refused to relinquish
the combination to the lock, and Joe Plante, who was in charge of
maintaining cutting-room equipment, had to be summoned to untangle the
labyrinth. Various people kept links of the chain as souvenirs. Mark Slade
still has his on a shelf in his Vancouver home.

Before working, Lipsett would stuff paper into the air vent in his editing
room to muffle the sounds. If he worked in someone else's room, he would
hide the splicer before leaving. Often it took days to find.

Lipsett's methods of working were even more bizarre. For
"A Trip Down
Memory Lane," he went to New York to obtain stock footage in 35mm which
he had reduced to l6mm, then he drew new edge numbers on it by hand.
Finally, he had it blown up to 35mm for release.

There was no way Arthur Lipsett was going to be turned into a
conventional item. "He could be marvelously evasive; he wouldn't be
trapped," states Colin Low.

"I felt what he was doing was terribly important," explains Don Brittain,
producer of "A Trip Down Memory Lane." But there was pressure when his
films were shown to management. They were light-years removed from what
Arthur wanted to do." After Arthur came back from the West Coast, he
suggested that he, Derek May, and I produce musicals à la MGM. I knew
that was the end."

For years Lipsett lived in the dreary Clifton Apartments, on
Côte-des-Neiges, overlooking the mountain in Montreal. The size of his room
was no bigger than a closet. Animator Derek Lamb describes it: "Storyboards
covered the walls, masking every inch. The Clifton was like living at the
YMCA without the amenities. Arthur had a bed and a cooker ring. He'd come to
my house all the time and would stay late into the evening. Eventually I
would have to throw him out."

"It was a wallpaper of notes, like an altar more than an office,"
recounts Derek May. Lipsett would buy a book or magazine and tear out the
pages to make his storyboards, which were fantastic works in themselves,
some as big as 4 feet by 2 feet. In this way, his films would develop, but
the images in his storyboards would not necessarily appear in his films.
They were merely images he was interested in. "He even stuck notes to the
dashboard of his black Beetle," Martin Lavut remembers.

"I once spent a weekend in the country with Arthur, 80 miles north of
Montreal, near Morin Heights," Derek Lamb relates. "Someone decided we
should go hunting, and they gave him a shotgun. He was such an unpredictable
person, I was terrified. He chain-smoked cigarettes and waved this shotgun. I
thought to myself that he might just like to see what I looked like with a
couple of bullet holes in me, like Swiss cheese. He had such curiosity."

Although he was very aware of the violence around him, Lipsett was not an
outwardly violent man. His destructive feelings were turned inward. He was
an extremely private person who almost never talked about his past.

Arthur Lipsett, Age 3, Oct. 15, 1939

Marian, Grandfather, Arthur, 1945
backyard on Hingston Ave.

His mother was a Russian Jew from Kiev. When he was 10, Arthur watched
her commit suicide. His father was a chemist. He had one sister, Marian. And
that was the most that his friends knew.

Arthur with sister Marian at day camp

There was a playful, but devilish side to Arthur Lipsett. He was
fascinated with lines, such as "Mary Bartlett's Pear Salad" or he would say
things like "It'll be great when they put the roof on...."

He would pop into another filmmaker's offices and flash an object and
then challenge the individual to guess how many frames the flash
represented. Or he'd appear with a film can filled with tightly rolled bits
of film and say, "Have one, they're delicious."

At a family-style picnic with friends, he once organized a demonstration
for kids. The parents were talking, ignoring the kids. Lipsett grouped them
together and induced them to demonstrate, toting placards saying "We want to
play Tag" or "Let's play Tug-O-War." Lipsett stood on the sidelines,
watching. The demonstration was a success. The parents were won over.

At other times he would amuse himself on his radio, jumping stations,
switching from station-to-station. He got tremendous delight from
juxtaposing one sound to another or tuning between stations to hear two
stations at the same time.

When he photographed people, he'd just walk into, say, a barber shop on
St. Lawrence Boulevard in Montreal and start shooting stills of someone having his hair
cut. At parties, he'd often wait until late at night to take pictures --
when people were in compromising positions. Not everyone appreciated this.
He loved to take advantage of situations.

After his Academy Award nomination, he received a letter from British
filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. The typewritten letter said, "I'm interested in
having a trailer done for Dr. Strangelove." Kubrick regarded Lipsett's work
as a landmark in cinema--a breakthrough. He was interested in involving
Lipsett. This didn't happen, but the actual trailer did reflect Lipsett's
style in Very Nice, Very Nice.

When Derek Lamb was director of animation at the NFB, he once presented a
series of NFB films in California. George Lucas ("Star Wars") later
came up and inquired. "How's Arthur Lipsett? He's a very important guy."
Apparently 21-87 was a big influence on Lucas' class at U.S.C.

At another point, Lipsett was invited to Harvard as a resident artist
under any conditions. Lipsett's response was that he would think about it.
He followed this with a letter: "I cannot come to Harvard at this time in
history, signed Arthur."

Another story has filmmaker Bob Verrall and Arthur Lipsett traveling to
the U.S., in an NFB station wagon. They had been sent to pick up a series of
large drawings by cartoonist Robert Osborne for a graphic sequence in an NFB
Film. Osborne didn't trust the mail for fear of damage to the drawings.

On the way to their hotel in Connecticut, they ran out of gas and then
locked the keys in the car. They were stranded on a remote road miles from
the hotel, and Lipsett, according to Verrall, thoroughly enjoyed every
moment. The car was finally rescued by a local dealer's master key. The
drawings were secured and they started on their return journey. In
Plattsburg, they made a brief washroom stop. "While I was washing my hands, I
was stopped by FBI agents," Verrall recounts. "Lipsett hooted and hollered. We
both were arrested on the spot for suspicious behavior."

"Arthur couldn't take it seriously, which made the FBI guys furious. His
kooky, Beatnik-like appearance probably added to the situation. Arthur said,
"They think we're Communist spies" and left, which didn't help. 'We're here
on government business," I pleaded. Finally the agents went out to the
station wagon, checked our references and let us go.

"Arthur was in high spirits the whole time. He enjoyed the insanity of
being temporarily arrested."

Arthur's Secret Museum

Lipsett was a prolific writer. He filled hundreds of notebooks of all
kinds and sizes. He loved those small, 29 cent, dime-store notebooks. Then
there were the bolted-down accountant's ledgers or the small, black school
notebooks which listed the contents of his films, one page per shot. The
pages could be moved forward and backwards, similar to what one does while
editing a film. Hilroy Narrow-Ruled Exercise Books catalogued sync shots,
stock shots, sound effects, stills: one book per category, all bound with
large rings. He also scribbled obscure notes on cigarette packages.

Lipsett's film "proposals" were full of metaphoric associations. He
considered these proposals a waste of time - a diversion of his energy.

.
Notes by Arthur Lipsett

"At NFB program committees he would show up with circular charts to
explain his next film project. No one on the committee wanted to admit they
didn't know what Arthur was talking about," Brittain recalls.

"We felt he was on to something," filmmaker Tanya Tree adds. "His range
was vast. Everything interested him: Chinese dictionaries, Buddhist chants.
He was trying to find universals in human culture, like an anthropologist.
It was as if he, himself, were from another planet, looking at us all -- as
he did in his films. He was very smart and knew how society worked."

"The quantity of films one makes is not important. What is essential is
historical context and the artistic quality. Lipsett's films were daring and
nervy," filmmaker Wolf Koenig comments.

He seemed out of his time-period; his work would have belonged in a
Chagall painting or would have been more suited to the Dadaists or
Surrealists of Paris in 1924, or 25 to 40 years later using another medium,"
Koenig continues. "People like to see development. Arthur did what he needed
to do in those few films. Life is a wasteful thing. He flowed, then was
plowed over. "Very Nice, Very Nice" was the world as he perceived it.
"21-87," his second film, reflected what was happening to him
internally."

"How of my clay is made the hangman's limes" (Dylan Thomas)

Lipsett's last years were painful. Much of his time was spent in and out
of the Montreal Jewish General Hospital's psychiatric ward. Having ceased
documenting life on film, perhaps he felt he had said what he had to say.
And only one question remained: why should life go on?

His final act may have been, as Tanya Tree surmises, "a kindness on his
behalf to get himself out of the way. It was painful for us all to be around
him; we felt so helpless to do anything." "At least he got some of his agony
transformed into art," adds Don Brittain.

Arthur hated to ask for things, but when he no longer had financial
resources, he was reduced to accepting what others could give. He lived with
his aunt for most of his last years in a small, modest apartment on St.
Kevin Street, where he slept on the front room couch. Just before he died, he
made one final trip to Vancouver, then returned to Montreal.

To calculate why someone takes his life is absurd. Like the newspaper
article that superficially attempts to explain why John Doe jumped out of
the window on Saturday night at 9 p.m., maybe he did have an argument with
his wife, maybe he hated to brush his teeth as a child or maybe the pizza
man forgot to deliver the pizza.

What makes life worth living? Lipsett was most involved when he was
making films. When this phase of his life ended, he didn't have anything to
give him pleasure. "Humans don't do well without that," Tanya Tree says.

"Something is lacking in the group energy of our community that would
permit to let happen what happened to Arthur," says photographer and friend
John Max.

In the end, Arthur Lipsett took "a permanent vacation," the logical
conclusion to the road he had chosen.

He had tested just how close one can come to the edge and come back to
report on it. "He seemed to be embarked on flirting dangerously with extreme
marginality," says Derek May. "It would be interesting to consider whether
suicide is an outcome of such a temperament."

Lipsett had attempted suicide on several occasions. When asked about
this, he would say, with a smile, "It was just one of my little
experiments."

"Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone
who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the
kingdom of the sick," writes Susan Sontag in "Illness as Metaphor."